This story starts on New Year's Day, 2024. I was on Facebook marketplace, looking at listings out of boredom, when an idea struck me out of the blue. I looked up "Dreamcast" in the Marketplace search bar. I had very little hope, the facebook search tool is infamously non-functional, but to my surprise, I found a listing for a Dreamcast with a controller, in the city I lived in, for $90.
I messaged the seller, asking if it was still available. She answered with astonishing speed ( a couple hours, I have no faith in marketplace sellers), telling me it was. I arranged to meet her at a mall in town at 2 PM on the 3rd. I was absolutely pumped. I had to work only a couple hours after I would get the system, so it'd be a little tight of a schedule, but it was worth it to me.
I got to the mall at 1:35. It was bitterly cold, and I didn't feel like idling my car for half an hour, so I let the seller know I'd be inside. I wandered around a few of my favorite stores until 2:20, when I started to get worried about the seller showing up in time for me to go back home and get ready to go to work. I sent a message saying "Did something happen on your end? Do I need to reschedule?"
To my relief, she responded after a minute, saying she had been called into work and had forgotten. Followed shortly by saying she could be there in 20 minutes. I did a quick calculation in my head for the drive home, getting into my work uniform, and the commute to work. I told the seller I could wait for that time. This would prove to be quite daring of me, as I would arrive home with only 10 minutes until I had to get driving to work. In the meantime, I bought lunch from a place in the food court, I hadn't expected to be here this long. It was a Philly cheesesteak and fries. Being that I live in the Midwest and not Philidelphia, I'm sure there would be some grumbling about how that's not a real Philly, but I didn't care, it was $14 for the meal and delicious. Uh, typing that price out kinda made me feel like it was overpriced... but isn't all mall food?
It was 2:43 PM when the seller told me she had parked. I met her by the entrance of the Food Court. The system was in an old cardboard box. She apologized for being late and offered to discount the price. That was how I ended up paying only $84. She went on to apologize for the fact that it didn't have any games, she had apparently sold the games separately long ago but hadn't managed to get rid of the system. I assured her it was alright, and after a closer inspection of the system's bottom, I saw the model number 1, and I told her that I'd be able to get games for the system with ease because of it. That confused her, she admited to not knowing much about the system, it was apparently her dad's. We parted shortly after, but since I parked at a different part of the mall parking, I had to carry the unmarked box through a good chunk of the mall, and I was hurrying something fierce. I'm lucky security didn't stop me LOL.
My Dreamcast, at home